Transport paralysed as irate youth block road over unpaid dues

Hundreds of youths contracted by the Makueni County government in upgrading various roads in the County on Tuesday morning staged a demo to protest against delayed pay.

Around 120 youths who reportedly worked in the repairing of Muthini-Isuuni road and Mukuyuni Mung’eli road in Kaiti Constituency blocked the Machakos-Wote road where they lit tires expressing anger over the unpaid dues.

“The County government gave us the job under the ‘Kazi kwa Vijana’ initiative, and we have been in and out of the county offices requesting for our money to be processed but our efforts have been falling on deaf ears,” said Ngumu Kasina, one of the youths.

Further, he protested that the County government had been working on ignorance with unfulfilled promises.

“The County had informed the youths to calm and wait for their dues to be settled today but till now they haven’t kept the promise,” added Kasina.

The Youths who had worked at Mukuyuni-Mung’eli road told The Standard that they had not been paid money amounting to Sh90,400 but it was uncertain on the amount the rest were demanding to be released.

It called for the intervention of police who dispersed the rowdy youth with Makueni head of pastors association, Reverent Patrick Kimwele coming in to calm the irritate youth calling on Governor Kivutha Kibwana to intervene and solve the stalemate.

“The County government should make a step of paying these youths,” said Kimwele

At the wake of the demonstrations before the Makueni County Assembly went on recess, the ward reps had threatened to impeach the County Executive Member for Roads, Transport and Infrastructure over incompetency in his work.

In a statement that had been read out by Kithungo/Kitundu MCA, Kisungi Katete, the assembly generally took the issue with the County’s roads’ department for delayed pay of the youths who had undertaken manual road works in various wards across the County.

According to the ward Reps, there was an allocation of Sh24 Million that was supposed to cater for the repair of roads that had been washed away by the heavy down-pour experienced this year-April but with such an amount the department had failed to pay the youths.

The assembly had however observed that the County had deplorable roads despite an allocation of sh. 1.5 million in 2017/2018 Financial year for heavy and light grading in each ward across the 30 wards.